Author: Fraser Whieldon

Five hundred and thirty finalists will be battling it out to see who will be crowned their skill’s national champion at WorldSkills UK LIVE this year, it has been announced. Many of the champions in the past have gone on to compete in Team UK internationally, either at EuroSkills or WorldSkills, which was held most […]

GCSE English in schools should be scrapped and replaced by a new qualification that could be sat at any age between 15 and 19, putting an end to the government’s “wasteful” resits policy, a major commission has recommended. The Forgotten Third commission, which was launched by the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), suggests […]

Twenty three more new training providers have received temporary bans on recruiting apprentices following early Ofsted inspections that found them making poor progress. Since October 2018, the watchdog has been carrying out monitoring visits at every directly-funded provider which won its own contract to deliver training after April 2017. Any that are found to be […]

A college principal embroiled in a bitter dispute with unions has denied withdrawing from a Trades Union Congress event panel after University and College Union leaders spotted his name on the agenda this weekend. Paul Di Felice, whose college Ruskin College, claims to train up to 2,500 trade union officers each year, was due to […]

The government has been told to “wakeup” after research by the Learning and Work Institute found adult participation in education has fallen to a record low. The news comes after adult education was snubbed in the Chancellor’s Spending Review, which handed £400 million to students aged 16 to 19 – but nothing to older learners. […]

The government’s latest apprenticeship campaign appears to be bearing fruit after the Department for Education claimed the proportion of interested young people has nearly doubled. Last November, the DfE awarded a two-year £5 million contract to one of the world’s most renowned advertising companies – M&C Saatchi – to help boost apprenticeship numbers across the […]

A provider co-founded by former Crystal Palace football striker Dougie Freedman has been rated ‘outstanding’ in some areas, in a week where nearly all providers scored well with Ofsted. Freedman’s Focus Fitness UK received a grade two overall in its first report from the watchdog, which rated the independent provider ‘outstanding’ for personal development and […]

A cookery school run by the Hadlow Group and celebrity chef Rosemary Shrager has closed, after the group’s two colleges went into administration. A notice posted on the school’s website reveals it closed with effect from August. It reads: “We regret to advise that owing to external financial pressures related to the well-publicised wider external […]